Jessie Lendennie was born in Arkansas, USA. After years of travel, she settled in Ireland in 1981. Her previous publications include a book-length prose poem Daughter (1988); reprinted as Daughter and Other Poems in 2001. She complied and edited: Salmon: A Journey in Poetry, 1981-2007; Poetry: Reading it, Writing It, Publishing It (2009) and Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology (2010). She is co-founder (1981) and Managing Director of Salmon Poetry. Her poems, essays and articles have been widely published and she has given numerous readings, lectures and writing courses in Ireland and abroad, including Yale University; Rutgers University; The Irish Embassy, Washington D.C; The University of Alaska, Fairbanks and Anchorage; MIT, Boston; The Loft, Minneapolis, MN; Café Teatre, Copenhagen, Denmark; the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville; The Irish American Cultural Centre, Chicago and The Bowery Poetry Club, New York City. She is currently working on a memoir To Dance Beneath the Diamond Sky.

Kevin Simmonds is a San Francisco-based writer, musician and filmmaker originally from New Orleans. His writing appears in journals such as Asia Literary Review, Callaloo, jubilat, Kyoto Journal and Poetry. His edited works include Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality and Ota Benga Under My Mother's Roof. His music and performances have been featured on BBC Radio 3, PBS and Japan's NHK Television and at London's Royal Festival Hall, Japan's Nakano Sun Plaza and the National Black Theatre Festival. feti(sh)ame, his genre-defying short film, based entirely on his poetry, has screened internationally and been hailed by Los Angeles film critic Ernest Hardy as "an elegantly profane meditation on desire." Mad for Meat is his debut collection.

This first audio file is the broadcast of Out of Our Minds radio show on KKUP 91.5FM and contains the most of the conversation with Jessie Lendennie and Kevin Simmonds recorded at my home and some selected poems from the reading at Bookshop Santa Cruz later that evening.